Touchstone's Editors and Allies on News and Events of the Day

August 04, 2010

Anne Rice's Catholic Anti-Catholicism

By now, most have read Anne Rice's emphatic rejection of Christianity. She laid out her template of left-wing values which are more important to her than being part of the church which rejects these things (anti-science, anti-Democrat, anti-gay, anti-life, waitaminute, did she say anti-life?) and declared her allegiance to Jesus alone.

What fascinates me about the way she has done this is how Catholic she is in her rejection of the Catholic Church.

If Anne Rice were a Protestant of almost any kind, she would surely flee to a denominational group or congregation which embraces Jesus while more closely approximating her values. There is no doubt it would be possible to do so. There are liberal Baptists, liberal Lutherans, liberal Methodists, etc.

But Rice doesn't avail herself of that opportunity. And I think I know why. Anne Rice movingly wrote of her Catholic childhood and of her dramatic return to the church. At no point did she apparently consider returning to faith as a Protestant. She clearly believes that the Catholic church is the only true manifestation of the Christian church. And thus, when she rejects it, there is no other church for her to join. She is affirming the church at the same time she loudly and publicly is slamming the door and running away.

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She clearly believes that the Catholic church is the only true manifestation of the Christian church. And thus, when she rejects it, there is no other church for her to join. She is affirming the church at the same time she loudly and publicly is slamming the door and running away.

Funny, that.

Which reminds me of the joke. Two guys meet in a bar in Northern Ireland, and get along famously after having a few. Finally, one says to the other, "So are ye Catholic 'r a Protestant?" The other says, "I'm an atheist". The first says, "Well, I'm an atheist too; but are ye a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?"

To be fair, Hunter, there are liberal Catholics too, and many most suburban RC congregations would never utter a line from the lectern that would conflict with Ms. Rice's views. On the contrary, a fair number of priests would actively encourage her delusions. Somehow, however, she recognizes that this isn't real Catholicism. In the eyes of dissidents who never left, the Revolution is simply incomplete. But to those who returned, the Revolution cannot actually happen without destroying the thing to which you returned. Frogs in a boiling pot-n-all that...

Ms. Rice did write movingly of her return to the Church. She studied scripture and wrote two wonderful 'historical' novels about Christ's life. She cannot long live like this, giving her life only to Jesus. Even more so because of what she wrote in her conversion story.

What may be missed by non-Catholics is the line her mother would use every morning: "Hurry, He's waiting for you on the altar". As a Catholic who returned after 35 years as a protestant, both mainline and evangelical, I wept at that line. I thought, if my parents had even once said that, I would never have wondered off for so long.

In the end, underlying all that we think brings us back, it is exactly that, the real presence of Christ in the Tabernacle on our altars waiting to receive us and be received by us. A miraculous gift that is not available to us anywhere else.

Too bad she made the wrong choice? Really?!? Who is to say whether the choice she made was wrong or right? I believe the only person capable of deciding whether or not her choice was right or wrong is Anne. No one else. What arrogance! Everyone's relationship with God and Jesus is going to be different. It's going to be personal. And no person has any right to tell another person that the way they decide to have a relationship with God and Jesus is wrong because it is personal. Just because you disagree doesn't make it wrong.

When I read Anne Rice's first book a couple of years ago, I was impressed with the scholarship underlying her writing while at the same time being a little disappointed with the inclusion of some Catholic interpretations such as Jesus performing miracles as a child and his mother Mary having no children by Joseph. Indeed I thought the best part of the book was the afterword in which she described how she returned to the faith after finding the scholarship of unbelieving academics so lacking in integrity.

Well, I thought, this story is just beginning; it will be very interesting to see how it plays out. It must be very difficult for a person of artistic attainment to keep to a strait and narrow path, especially when the sophisticated world they inhabit is so articulate in its scorn. I think of Bob Dylan and Jane Fonda as well and hope that the story is not over. Still, for those of us who think that "mere Christianity" is a pearl of such price that everything else may be jettisoned in order to possess it, we should not be surprised or dismayed if some we had great hope for find the cost too steep and become enemies of the cross.

The Church likes to cherry pick from the Old Testament for it's position on the control of women's bodies, pro war, anti gay positions! A little New Testament is in order. And just remember that the gospels were written by followers of Jesus with their own interpretations of what he said and did. Thus the contradictions. Hardly something to base the absolutist positions the old boys in the Vatican take.

When the time comes we will all have to answer to our maker (whoever or whatever we perceive that to be), including Ms. Rice. I don't think any of us are in a position to pass judgment on Ms. Rice because the last time I looked none of us are perfect.

Anne Rice seems to have forgotten about the words of the Word "Whatsoever you bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever you loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven," or to imagine that they are addressed to her own sweet autonomous self -- in which she is in company with other commenters on this thread.

She clearly believes that the Catholic church is the only true manifestation of the Christian church. And thus, when she rejects it, there is no other church for her to join. She is affirming the church at the same time she loudly and publicly is slamming the door and running away.

I think Mr. Baker has assumed too much. Here is an interview with Anne Rice.

Here we see a great difficulty for any 'mere' Christianity: the inability to get beyond our own mind-sets to discern the truth (even if we don't like it). In the practice of 'mere' Chrisitanity are we called to enter into the highest common understanding of what it means to be Christian or 'merely' accept the lowest common denominator so the we can merely co-exist in human terms?

Unless we understand our own minds and hearts on what it means to be Christian, we will simply assume the other person has the same criteria as we do, even when they don't.

Personally I emphatically disagree with all of the expression of Christianity (explict and implicit) in this thread and the concomitant assumption of what it means to be in His Church. The most eggregiously wrong and offensive is the sophomoric rant that Jesus was a left wing politico.

There are certain doctrines that one must accept to even begin to be Christian. If Anne Rice has rejected any of those doctrines she has made an error which could easily lead her away from salvation. There are many who proclaim themselves 'Christian' who are simply not in any meaninful sense because they reject some or all of the fundamental doctines of the Christian faith such as the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man, etc. At the same time the Christian faith is not, nor has it ever been an ideology but a living inter-relationship of the human and divine; the Creator and His creation. He is "everywhere present and fills all things..."

Being Christian is not nor has it ever been merely an individual act--God calls us to Himself in community, i.e. communion. Being Christian is therefore a communal and profoundly human act of mutual submission to God's love and to one another that, by His grace, allows us to get beyond the scars of our sins; the horrible separation from God and our own being so that we can explore our common humanity and be healed by the divine grace extended to all of us in His Incarnation. We can know the Truth and proclaim it even if not in its fullness. Any claim to a human inability to do so is not Christian.

Outside the Body there is no 'relationship' only a perception which often devolves into a unique set of legalist/moralistic dictums and practices that allows the individual to be content while not approaching salvation at all. Worse yet, a moral and spiritual anarchy/hubris can set-in that actively prevents the person from approaching Christ at all.

There is no salvation apart from Christ, no Christ apart from the Church -- we just need to realize who and what the Church is and how she is manifest in this world.

The Christian life is the way of the Cross, kenotic love and repentance. I dare say that none of is there yet but that does not prevent us from being able to discern when a way of life and a choice leads toward the Cross or away from it. I pray that Anne Rice has not turned away.